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Thursday, September 19, 2013

I swear that the weeks are passing faster than I can keep up as here we are again at the third Thursday of the month and it’s Improv Cooking Challenge reveal day. Years seem to be passing quickly too as this post is also my 24th reveal in this challenge, so two full years and not a month missed…yay me!!

This month for the Improv Cooking Challenge our hostess Kristen of Frugal Antics of a Harried Homemaker challenged the participating bloggers to make any recipe of their choosing using the specified ingredients of pasta & cheese! Sounds simple enough but this was a tough one for me but shoot I wasn’t going to miss this month and break my posting streak. The reason that this month was difficult was, I haven’t been eating pasta in any form, nor have I been eating cheese or any of it’s fake versions, Maisie has her allergies and only eats non-wheat pastas and non-dairy cheese and Eammon, well he eats pasta but doesn’t care for cheese at all. Then I got to thinking about it and before we found out about Maisie’s allergies, one of her favorite foods was good old mac & cheese. Well right then and there I decided it was time to make an old favorite for my girl in a Maisie “safe” version so that’s exactly how this recipe came about. I added one of her new favorites to the dish for some added protein, sweet Italian sausage. This dish was made exclusively for my Maisie and she just adored it, delighted to have an old and new favorite meal all in one bowl.

Prepare pasta according to box directions. Once the pasta is tender, drain. In the now empty pot melt the margarine and whisk in the flax seed, mustard and garlic powder until you have a thick paste. Whisk in the almond milk until the sauce is smooth and creamy. Stir in 1 1/2 cups of the Daiya and stir until completely melted. This may take a while as Daiya cheese takes a lot longer to melt compared to real cheese. Stir in the pasta and coat with the sauce. Stir in the remaining 1/2 cup of Dayia and stir to incorporate. Add salt & fresh ground pepper to taste. Add sliced grilled sweet Italian sausage and serve.

Sunday, September 8, 2013

It’s that time again and this month for Secret Recipe Club I was assigned Shannon’s wonderful blog, Searching for Dessert. Shannon’s blog is filled with just hundreds of gorgeous recipes for breads, brownies, cookies, cakes, pies and other delicious looking and sounding sweet treats. I was totally drooling over her Lime Meringue Bars, Flourless Fudge Cookies and her Light Meyer Lemon Sugar Cookies but I really couldn’t make any of them because Maisie has her allergies to wheat, egg and dairy and I’ve been avoiding gluten, wheat, sugar, sweeteners both natural and artificial, and a whole host of other items and Eammon, well he just doesn’t really need any sweets so I didn’t want anyone tempted...boohoo… So after all my drooling over forbidden sweets, I checked out Shannon’s Meatless Monday recipes and found her recipe for Carrot & Potato Pancakes and I knew that I could easily adapt it to fit all our dietary restrictions. I will say that I was being strong and really, really good by not baking any of her sweet and delicious treats and I totally admit that I did wallowed in self pity for a while but after making my version of her Carrot & Potato Pancakes, not once, not twice, but three times, I was crying no more and was a very happy camper.

I really just made some small changes to the original recipe, I swapped out the white potato with a sweet potato, l left out the flour and increased the egg in the version that Eammon and I enjoyed and used chia seed gel in place of the egg in the ones I made for Maisie. Also because I used sweet potatoes I decided to add a bit of roasted cinnamon because it just goes so perfectly with both sweet potatoes and carrots.

I served these Carrot & Sweet Potato Pancakes as a side dish with dinner and I also enjoyed snacking on them cold but my favorite way to enjoy them was nice and hot with a perfectly cooked over-easy egg on top which added just a wonderful creamy richness to the already delicious pancakes. Check out Shannon’s blog for the original recipe.

In a medium bowl, stir together the sweet potato, carrot, onion, salt, roasted cinnamon and black pepper. Stir in the eggs until the mixture is evenly combined.

Heat a large cast iron skillet over medium heat and add just enough coconut oil to lightly coat the bottom of the pan. Using about a 1/4 cup measure place the sweet potato mixture into the pan and flatten patties to about 1/4-inch thick. Cook until first side is golden brown and then carefully flip and cook the second side until golden.